Feb 26, 2017

Here’s my second character aesthetic post! (Adair’s is here.) This one is for Blythe, the other main character of my trilogy. As much warrior as healer, she’s strong-willed, quick at making decisions, and just as quick to speak her mind and heart. She has a soft spot for those in need, which is how Adair ends up connected to the rest of the characters when he stumbles into their carnival camp.

Blythe is the type of person who needs to be busy all the time, so she always has too many careers and hobbies going on. I tried to include some of these. Her main job is as an arcane healer for a troupe of carnival performers where she also works as a sword dancer and knife thrower/performer. “Do no harm but take no shit” works well as a motto for her because she has a healer’s oaths, but she has a background with weapons as a Protectorate (military-type group who protects the culture’s art and trade) and becomes one of Adair’s sentinels (bodyguard/spouse) in book 2. She always wears her hair in a long braid, which is a symbol of her status as a Protectorate. She has a bottle necklace where she keeps seeds and small plant clippings that she comes across. She loves to knit and crochet and has a habit of making things for her friends. (Etri, her best friend, has *so* many scarves and pairs of socks.) All of my characters are some flavor of lgbt+, so I’m going to try to include something for this for each of them. In Blythe’s case she’s grey romantic (aromantic).

(Once again, Pinterest can’t give sources properly and Google is failing me in reverse image searching most of these to any kind of original source. #6 came from here, but the closest I can find for the others is #2 here, #4 here, #5 here, and #7 here.)

Feb 23, 2017

I got it into my head today that I wanted to make aesthetic grid things for my characters. After spending three hours on this one, we'll see if I get the other four done, but I'm pretty happy with this! This one is for Adair, the main character of my trilogy.

To ramble a bit, blue and purple are his thing- sky blue because it's his favorite color, purple because it's the color of his magic. He's a Colorweaver, which is an artist with illustration magic. (Basically he's an illusionist whose drawings and paintings move on the paper/canvas.) His occupation is cartographer, but he spends all of his free time sketching, painting, and cooking. And eating. And trying to feed everyone he loves, although good luck getting him to share pie! (I love the quote on the center picture because he actually does befriend the shy character by giving him tea and getting him to talk about himself.) He has a pet cat who follows him everywhere. A magical mishap left him with tattoo-like whirls over much of his upper body; this picture was as close as I could find. I wanted something to represent the trans flag and this bracelet is very Adair- not because he wears hearts, but because he's so friendly and affectionate. Although he would probably wear a bracelet with hearts on it if just for the pun of wearing his heart on his sleeve.

I'm having a heck of a time finding the original sources for some of the pictures even with google image search (ugh Pinterest why are you so bad with sourcing properly??) but the 1st came from here, 3rd may have come from here, 4th here, 5th here, and 8th here.